NEWSLETTER - Johns Hopkins University · In this issue of the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures...
Transcript of NEWSLETTER - Johns Hopkins University · In this issue of the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures...
Every day at Johns Hopkins, our deeply talented faculty, staff and students develop innovations with the potential to benefit people all over the world—from as far away as India to right here in our own backyard in Baltimore. Our mission at FastForward and Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures is to enable these amazing technologies to come to life and—in the process—to build a robust ecosystem that supports even more innovation.
Fiscal year 2015 was a busy one for Johns Hopkins researchers, physicians and employees, who submitted a staggering 500 invention disclosures to the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures office—more than a 10 percent increase from last year. This
significant number reflects the innovative ecosystem within Johns Hopkins and lays the groundwork for potential products, services and know-how to benefit the public.
In this issue of the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures Newsletter, we highlight recent events and a few technologies and collaborations that demonstrate the true range of the innovative work being done at Johns Hopkins. From a plan for Baltimore’s first commercial hydroponic farm, to an international collaboration for drug discovery, to a medical device company with applications for the military and the developing world, read on to learn more about the exciting things happening here.
Social Innovation Lab Supports Innovations to Help Baltimore
A plan to build Baltimore’s first
commercial hydroponic farm;
a digital platform for Baltimore
residents to call attention to neighborhood
issues; a tool to help Internet novices,
especially the elderly, stay connected with
their communities and families—what do
these have in common?
All were developed by participants of The
Johns Hopkins University’s Social Inno-
vation Lab, an early-stage incubator for
innovative nonprofits and mission-driven
companies whose technologies address
pressing social issues in Baltimore and
beyond. The program, which just completed
its fourth year, held its annual Impact and
Innovation Forum Demo Day on April 27.
This year’s cohort of emerging social enter-
prises addressed challenges in the areas of
medicine, food, community and technology.
“The Social Innovation Lab is a place where
positive ideas for making Baltimore and
the world a better place can take root and
grow,” says Christy Wyskiel, senior advisor
to the president of The Johns Hopkins
University.
“Now more than ever, we know we need to
address the challenges we face right here in
our own backyard, and many in this year’s
Social Innovation Lab cohort are tackling
these issues head on,” Wyskiel says.
Continued on page 9
ISSUE #4 JULY 2015
IN THIS ISSUE
Hopkins BME/CBID Design Day 2015
P2
App to Teach Sight-Reading
P4
HealthCare Collaborate
P7
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE2015 DreamIt Health Baltimore (P3)
Novel Drug Delivery System (P5)
Hopkins-MedImmune Collaboration (P5)
Hopkins-Bayer Collaboration (P7)
FastForward News (P10)
AND MORE
NEWSLETTER
Members of the 2015 Social Innovation Lab cohort
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JOHNS HOPKINS TECHNOLOGY VENTURES NEWSLETTER
This year’s graduate teams developed the
following products:
• An assistive device for non-image-guided central venous access
• CardiON: a home monitoring system for heart failure management
• DrinkSync: a hydration status monitor for chronic patients
• A neonatal vital signs monitoring system
• Renalert: a real-time monitor for acute kidney injury
• Rural Health Kiosk: a system for providing primary care to rural India
• A training system for vaginal examination and fetal head assessment
• Tremtex: neurostimulation devices for the management of Parkinson’s disease symptoms
The undergraduate teams developed:
• A laparoscopic fascia closure device
• A novel assistive device for lower limb prostheses
• A novel stem cell delivery device
• A novel technology to mitigate scissoring gait in cystic fibrosis patients
• A novel tracheal stent
• A self-contained uterine contraction monitor for low-resource clinical settings
• A surgical tool to reduce complications associated with spinal revision surgery
• An early screening tool for preterm labor
• Pranapulse: a deskilled EKG for low-resource clinical settings
• Regulaire: a closed-loop oxygen
controller for premature infants
• SpiroSense: a deskilled spirometer for
low-resource settings
• TenoSlice: a novel tool to harvest tendons
• The CITT Kit: a kit of deskilling contraceptive implantation and removal procedures
Students Present Med-Tech, Global Health Solutionsat Johns Hopkins BME/CBID Design Day 2015
More than 100 Johns Hopkins stu-
dents spent the past year develop-
ing medical technology and global
health innovations that address some of
today’s most pressing health care issues. Their
products included a spirometer, SpiroSense,
that helps diagnose respiratory conditions
of patients in developing countries, and a
device, DrinkSync, for measuring hydration in
patients suffering from chronic ailments.
The 21 teams—eight graduate and 13 un-
dergraduate—presented their innovations at
the sixth annual Johns Hopkins Biomedical
Engineering Design Day on May 5.
“Design Day 2015 was a very special one for
us,” says Youseph Yazdi, assistant professor of
biomedical engineering at The Johns Hopkins
University and executive director of the Cen-
ter for Bioengineering Innovation and Design
(CBID). “We dedicated fundraising during the
day to maternity clinics in Nepal who host our
CBID students each year and who are dealing
with the aftermath of the recent earthquake,”
he adds.
This past year, some students designed
medical technologies for the U.S. market,
while others created global health products
for use in developing countries. For technol-
ogies to be used in the U.S., teams worked
with Johns Hopkins clinicians who acted as
advisors, while teams working on devices
for developing countries were assisted by
corporate sponsors and nonprofits, such as
Jhpiego, an international health organization
affiliated with The Johns Hopkins University.
Global health students traveled to places as
far away as Nepal and India for research and
development.
Participants in the 2015 BME/CBID Design Day include students from the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering
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ISSUE #4 | JULY 2015
Health IT Entrepreneurs Showcase Startups at Capstone Event Co-Sponsored by Johns Hopkins
After weeks of intense work, the six
teams were ready. Some partici-
pants had moved to Baltimore from
hundreds of miles away, many had lost track
of the number of all-nighters they’d pulled,
and all were excited about their ideas to use
21st-century technology to solve a variety of
health care issues.
The six startup teams formed the cohort for
this year’s DreamIt Health Baltimore 2015
accelerator program, a four-month intensive
boot camp for health information technology
entrepreneurs co-sponsored by Johns Hop-
kins. On May 13, “Demo Day,” the startups
presented their health care solutions and fu-
ture plans to an audience of industry leaders,
possible investors and potential customers.
“Demo Day represents the culmination of four
months of hard work and determination,”
says Jason Hardebeck, managing director of
DreamIt Health Baltimore.
“Every one of these companies has validated
key business assumptions and developed
viable strategies to move from concept to
market,” Hardebeck adds. “I can’t wait to
watch these entrepreneurs ignite the second
stage of their rocketships.”
During the 16 weeks leading up to Demo Day,
the startup teams were provided with:
• Coaching: Each team was assigned a mentor and top-tier legal and accounting representation.
• Curriculum: Teams had access to curricula, such as Founders 101, designed to educate and motivate; a weekly speaker series; and office hours with industry, government, investor, academic and other experienced leaders.
• Connections: Teams received introductions to potential funders, partners and customers.
• Community: Teams worked in a collaborative space with access to a network of peers and other previous DreamIt companies.
• Challenge: Teams experienced a sense of urgency demanded by the limited four-month time frame of the program.
• Capital: Teams received up to $50,000 and in-kind software and Web hosting services.
This year’s cohort was also co-sponsored
by the University of Maryland, the Maryland
Department of Business and Economic De-
velopment, the Economic Alliance of Greater
Baltimore, the Abell Foundation and BioHealth
Innovation.
“Technology is dramatically changing the world
of health care,” says Christy Wyskiel, senior
advisor to the president at The Johns Hop-
kins University. “New health care information
technology companies need the right tools
to begin their path to success, and DreamIt
Health provides those tools. We are proud to
co-sponsor this world-class accelerator that
brings promising companies to Baltimore.”
The six DreamIt Health Baltimore 2015 startups
were:
• Baton (of Baltimore), a mobile app that ensures the seamless transition of patient care between hospital teams to avoid preventable medical errors
• Decisive Health Systems (of San Francisco), an online information and communication portal dedicated to helping doctors and their patients come together to make better, more informed decisions about patient care
• InsightMedi (of Spain), a photosharing network for health care professionals designed to enhance education and enable curbside consultations on a large scale
• Nomful (of Chicago), an app democratizing personalized nutrition support so that everyone can have access to a network of expert nutrition coaches
• Redox (of Madison, Wisconsin), which enables software developers to rapidly integrate with installed legacy health information technology systems through a modern application programming interface
• Sisu Global Health (of Grand Rapids, Michigan), which develops medical devices for the most challenging environments and markets; its first product enabled autotransfusion of hemorrhaging patients in the field with military and developing world applications
Opening remarks at the 2015 DreamIt Health Baltimore Demo Day event
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JOHNS HOPKINS TECHNOLOGY VENTURES NEWSLETTER
The ability to sight-read—to play an unfamiliar piece of music
from start to finish, without stopping—is an important skill for
any pianist. Yet many piano students find it a difficult skill to
master—even students at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins
University, one of the world’s pre-eminent music schools.
Recognizing this need, Peabody Institute music theory professors
Travis Hardaway and Ken Johansen developed an app to help students
learn to sight-read.
“Many Peabody Institute students are expert performers, but some
of them sight-read at a lower level than what one might expect,”
Hardaway says.
Hardaway and Johansen worked with other Johns Hopkins research-
ers, including Peter Dziedzic, a software engineer and research data
systems manager for the Department of Neurology in the Johns Hop-
kins University School of Medicine, and Charles Limb, an associate pro-
fessor of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine, who studies the neuroscience of music,
in structuring the app’s learning modules. Eye-tracking studies helped
shed light on how the eye reads music across a page.
The app, called Read Ahead, displays piano music on a tablet but takes
away the measures of the music, one by one, forcing a student to read
the music ahead of where he or she is playing. The app also contains
warmup exercises that train the eyes to look for patterns, the mind
to increase short-term memory and the hands to find notes without
looking at the keyboard.
Johansen and Hardaway tested the app with piano students in the
Baltimore area, and they found that it is best for students 10 years old
and up working five to 10 minutes a day on the exercises.
Read Ahead has six levels, with three sublevels and hundreds of exer-
cises at each level. It’s designed primarily for use on tablets, although
some of its features will work on smartphones. Johns Hopkins startup
BST Medical Solutions helped develop the app’s cross-platform func-
tionality.
The Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures (JHTV) office helped
Hardaway and Johansen turn Read Ahead into a viable product by as-
sisting with applications for patents and Maryland Innovation Initiative
grants. Hardaway and Johansen formed a company, Anacrusis LLC,
and received funding from all three phases of the Maryland program.
“JHTV really helped us work through the whole process. They were a
huge advocate for us,” Johansen says.
The JHTV office also encouraged Hardaway and Johansen to apply for
participation in the DC I-Corps program, which teaches entrepreneurs
how to develop ideas into successful products.
The I-Corps program “beat customer discovery into us,” Johansen
says, requiring them to interview music teachers to make sure they
were developing something teachers could use. Hardaway and Johan-
sen are also developing a teachers’ portal that will allow teachers to
check on student progress.
“Teachers all say that sight-reading is extremely important,” Johansen
says, “but they don’t always have time to work it into a piano lesson.”
To download a free trial of the app, visit Anacrusis’ website at
anacrusisllc.com
Peabody Professors Develop App to Teach Sight-Reading to Music Students
Ken Johansen and Travis Hardaway display their app, ReadAhead
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ISSUE #4 | JULY 2015
Johns Hopkins Team Develops Novel Drug Delivery System
Drugs that must pass through
protective layers of mucus to deliver
treatment to organs of the body
are often not very effective, because the
mucus—a sticky, meshlike material—prevents
the drug from ever reaching its intended target.
But hope is on the horizon in the form of a
novel drug delivery system developed over
the past 15 years by a research team led by
Justin Hanes, director of the Center for Nano-
medicine at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns
Hopkins.
Hanes’s system packages drugs into nanopar-
ticles small enough to penetrate a mucus lay-
er through tiny openings in the sticky mesh,
and it gives those nanoparticles a minimally
adhesive coating that enables them to slide
through the mesh without getting stuck to
it. Kala Pharmaceuticals, a startup co-found-
ed by Hanes, is developing these coated
nanoparticles.
To develop the nonadhesive coating for the
nanoparticles, Hanes and his team studied
mucus-penetrating viruses, such as the Nor-
walk and human papilloma viruses. By 2007,
Hanes says, they had developed a coating
that could make a nanoparticle pass through
mucus “almost as if the mucus was water.”
A few years later, Hanes and his team joined
Peter McDonnell, director of the Wilmer Eye
Institute, and McDonnell’s team to apply the
technology to developing drugs that treat
conditions of the eye.
In clinical trials that took place this past win-
ter, Kala Pharmaceuticals tested how well the
system could deliver drugs prescribed to treat
dry eye and post-cataract surgery pain. To
reach their target, such drugs must pene-
trate the protective mucus layer that covers
the eye. According to Hanes, the trials were a
success.
The coated nanoparticles—called mucus-pen-
etrating particles, or MPPs—have wide-rang-
ing implications, with potential use for drug
delivery to many different organs, since mu-
cus is prevalent throughout the human body
as a barrier to infection, Hanes says.
The coating helps ensure a drug’s effective-
ness and reduce dosage levels. “Even with
less drug and a less frequent application of
the drug, you can still get just as good—or
better—effects,” because the drug isn’t being
caught in the mucus, Hanes says.
In developing the MPPs, Hanes and his
co-workers went against prevailing theory
that particles large enough to carry drugs
would be caught in the mucus rather than
pass through it.
Now, with several patents protecting its
system, Kala Pharmaceuticals is set to
dominate the field of mucus-penetrating
drug delivery.
Typical treatments for rheumatoid
arthritis target symptoms of the
disease—namely, the inflammation
that results when a patient’s immune system
attacks his or her body, particularly the joints.
But Felipe Andrade, associate professor of
medicine in the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine, believes the field of
medicine can do better. He’s looking for a way
to halt a process called citrullination, which
turns one type of protein into another that, in
patients with rheumatoid arthritis, is attacked
by the immune system, causing inflammation.
If citrullination of these proteins could be
stopped in these patients, “it would be like
putting out the fire before it happens,”
Andrade says.
Andrade and his team of Johns Hopkins
researchers and students—including Erika
Darrah, assistant professor of medicine— are
working with a team of researchers from
MedImmune to find a way to control or stop
citrullination from causing inflammation.
They’re in their second year of a three-year
collaboration, and they’re hoping to get closer
to developing a therapy or drug that could
bring some relief to patients with rheumatoid
arthritis.
“We’re not yet at the drug development
stage, but we’re trying to find therapeutic
opportunities based on what we’re studying,”
Andrade says.
They know that patients with rheumatoid
arthritis have a specific type of antibody—
directed against peptidyl arginine deiminase
(PAD) 4—that increases the activity of
the enzyme responsible for starting the
citrullination process. They want to figure
out how that happens and how to stop PAD4
from causing citrullination, explains Andrade,
the leader for Johns Hopkins’s part of the
collaboration.
The collaboration is an equal partnership.
Together, researchers from MedImmune
and Johns Hopkins analyze data and make
suggestions on next steps.
It’s also a unique opportunity for Johns
Hopkins researchers. The drug development
industry approaches research with the goal
of developing novel therapies—a goal that
sometimes gets lost in the academic realm,
Andrade explains.
And support from industry gives academic
researchers the chance to work on something
that, Andrade says, might not otherwise be
supported in any other way.Read more about
this year’s mentors on the Johns Hopkins
Technology Ventures website at ventures.jhu.
edu/mentors-in-residence.
Felipe Andrade, associate professor of medicine in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Felipe Andrade, associate professor of medicine in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins-MedImmune Collaboration Seeks to Stop Rheumatoid Arthritis Before It Happens
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JOHNS HOPKINS TECHNOLOGY VENTURES NEWSLETTER
Johns Hopkins Biologists, IOCB Chemists Team Up for Drug Discovery
Johns Hopkins has proven expertise
in biological discovery and medicine,
while the Institute of Organic Chemistry
and Biochemistry (IOCB) in Prague, Czech Re-
public, employs more than 650 chemists and
biochemists. Put them together and you’ve
got a team perfectly positioned to make great
strides in small-molecule drug discovery.
This past spring, the Johns Hopkins Drug Dis-
covery (JHDD) program and the IOCB formal-
ized a translational collaboration to join forces
for drug discovery. The effort will be led by
Barbara Slusher, JHDD director and founder
and president of the Academic Drug Discov-
ery Consortium, an international collaborative
network of more than 100 university-led drug
discovery centers and programs.
JHDD is the largest integrated drug discovery
program on campus, responsible for trans-
lating basic science discoveries at Johns
Hopkins into novel small-molecule drug
therapies. Included in Slusher’s drug discovery
team are medicinal chemists, assay develop-
ers, pharmacologists, toxicologists and drug
metabolism experts.
The JHDD program began as the Johns
Hopkins Brain Science Institute’s NeuroTrans-
lational Drug Discovery Program, which
focused on the development of neuroscience
discoveries. Earlier this year, the program’s
team was tasked by the School of Medicine
with aiding development of discoveries in all
therapeutic areas, not just the brain.
But scaling up in scope required a corre-
sponding scaling up in size, and while Johns
Hopkins has plenty of biologists and special-
ists in the field of medicine, it doesn’t have
as many chemists. The IOCB is selectively
focused on chemistry and has a history of
successful drug translation, including its dis-
covery of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, one
of the most successful antiretroviral drugs on
the market, Slusher says.
The Johns Hopkins-IOCB collaboration,
therefore, is “a strategic marriage between
their expertise and capacity and ours,”
Slusher says. “This gives us the ability to
pursue more ideas than we could on our
own,” and it puts the collaboration’s medicinal
chemistry capacity on par with that of big
pharmaceutical companies.
The two institutions have been working
together on various projects for some years—
several joint patents have been filed—so the
formal collaboration is a natural extension of
the existing relationship.
In drug discovery, biologists identify condi-
tions of the body that could benefit from a
drug, and chemists develop drugs to target
that condition. Biologists then test the drugs
to see if the drugs inhibit the condition or not.
“Drug discovery is very much a team sport,”
Slusher says.
At JHDD, every week starts with a team meet-
ing between the two institutions. “We bring
biological target ideas, assays and expertise
in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics.
They bring medicinal chemistry expertise,
and we work as a team, communicating back
and forth along the path of drug discovery,”
Slusher explains.
The agreement will run for five years, after
which it will be renewable.
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ISSUE #4 | JULY 2015
Johns Hopkins, Bayer HealthCare Collaborate to Develop Ophthalmic Therapies
Attendees at the Johns Hopkins – Bayer HealthCare collaboration kick-off eventAttendees at the Johns Hopkins – Bayer HealthCare collaboration kick-off event
The Johns Hopkins University and Bayer HealthCare entered
into a five-year collaboration agreement on June 15 to jointly
develop new ophthalmic therapies targeting retinal diseases.
The goal of the strategic research alliance is to accelerate the
translation of innovative approaches from the laboratory to the clinic,
ultimately offering patients new treatment options for several retinal
diseases.
Under the agreement, researchers at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns
Hopkins and Bayer HealthCare will jointly conduct research activities
evaluating new targets and disease mechanisms, drug delivery
technologies, and biomarkers for back-of-the-eye diseases with high
unmet medical need.
Both parties will contribute personnel and infrastructure to address
important scientific questions. Bayer HealthCare will have an option for
the exclusive use of the collaboration results.
“There is a critical need for new therapies that treat a variety of serious
diseases of the eye,” says Peter McDonnell, director of the Wilmer
Eye Institute and professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine. “Additional research will allow us the
opportunity to make significant advances in this area.”
The collaboration aims to discover and develop innovative drugs for
the treatment of serious back-of-the-eye diseases that affect many
people worldwide, such as:
• Age-related macular degeneration
• Diabetic macular edema
• Geographic atrophy
• Stargardt’s disease
• Retinal vein occlusion
“The Wilmer Eye Institute’s deep understanding of eye disease
biology and patient care and Bayer’s expertise in drug discovery and
development in ophthalmology complement each other perfectly,”
says Professor Andreas Busch, head of global drug discovery at Bayer
HealthCare and a member of Bayer HealthCare’s executive committee.
“We are pleased to partner with this renowned institute, which is
among the leading scientific and clinical institutions in ophthalmology
worldwide.”
Work on projects that are a part of this exciting collaboration will begin
later this summer.
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JOHNS HOPKINS TECHNOLOGY VENTURES NEWSLETTER
Johns Hopkins Team Wins Entrepreneurs’ Choice Award at Venture Capital Competition
Johns Hopkins works not only to foster
startups whose products have the
potential to improve the well-being of
people all over the world, but also to produce
savvy investors with business acumen and a
strong sense of market dynamics.
Earlier this year, a team of Johns Hopkins
University graduate student investors-in-
training won the Entrepreneurs’ Choice award
at the 2015 mid-Atlantic regional final of the
Global Venture Capital Investment Competition
(VCIC), during which judges evaluate the
competencies of teams of student venture
capitalists.
Global VCIC takes place among graduate
students at more than 70 business schools
around the world. Teams of student venture
capitalists participate by competing in one of
12 regional finals held during the winter on
three continents to qualify for the Global VCIC
competition held in the spring. Throughout
the rounds of the competition, students act as
venture capitalists, evaluating real start-ups
and interacting with entrepreneurs. Actual
venture capitalists judge how well the student
venture capital teams evaluate the startups,
according to VCIC’s website.
At this year’s Global VCIC mid-Atlantic regional
final, hosted by Georgetown University’s
McDonough School of Business on Jan. 30, the
Johns Hopkins University team of Ali Afshar,
Christopher Bailey, Sean Grant, Tim Xu and
Kimi Yang ranked third in the meeting and
negotiations category in addition to winning
the Entrepreneurs’ Choice award. The team
was the first Johns Hopkins University VCIC
team to win that award. At VCIC competitions,
Entrepreneurs’ Choice award winners are
selected by entrepreneurs representing the
startups evaluated by the student venture
capital teams. For their Entrepreneurs’ Choice
award, the Johns Hopkins University team
received a recognition plaque, which now
hangs at The Johns Hopkins University Carey
Business School.
A week before the regional final, The Johns
Hopkins University hosted an internal
VCIC competition to determine a winner
to represent the university at that regional
competition. The winning team of Afshar,
Bailey, Grant, Xu and Yang competed against
13 other self-formed, multidisciplinary teams
of Johns Hopkins University graduate student
venture capitalists.
This internal competition was organized by
The Johns Hopkins University’s Innovation
Factory, a student-led organization promoting
entrepreneurship and innovation, and was
judged by nine venture capitalists from across
the country. The teams each evaluated four
startups affiliated with Johns Hopkins—
Quantified Care (specializing in medical
technology), Proscia (bioinformatics), Urban
Pastoral Collective (hydroponics) and Full
Society (payment applications).
Johns Hopkins’ team had only one week
to gear up for the Global VCIC mid-Atlantic
regional final after winning The Johns Hopkins
University’s internal VCIC competition, but they
pulled it off.
“The fact that our team won the
Entrepreneurs’ Choice award shows what a
multidisciplinary Johns Hopkins University
team can accomplish in short order,” says Jim
Liew, assistant professor of entrepreneurial
finance at the Carey Business School and
one of the participating judges. “I was
extremely impressed by their enthusiasm,
professionalism and intensity.”
From left to right: Christopher Bailey, Tim Xu, Sean Grant, Kimi Yang, Ali Afshar
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ISSUE #4 | JULY 2015
For example, the Neighborhood Watch app,
developed in the lab this year by undergrad-
uate students Elana Stroud, a computer
science major, and Camilla Dohlman, a public
health studies major, aims to provide Balti-
more residents with a way to bring attention
to issues plaguing their communities. App us-
ers might, for example, propose ways in which
to revitalize a vacant lot, says Darius Graham,
the lab’s director.
The students behind Urban Pastoral, another
project this year, hope to create the first com-
mercial-scale, urban hydroponic farm to sup-
ply Baltimore schools with fresh produce and
Baltimore residents with green jobs, Graham
says. In the process, the students hope to find
ways to reduce the environmental impact of
large-scale industrial farming, eliminate the
need for pesticide use, increase the ability to
buy locally and provide job opportunities in
the Baltimore community.
This year’s cohort of emerging social ventures
included:
• Urban Pastoral (Julie Buisson and Mark Verdecia, graduate students at Carey Busi-ness School, and J. Reidy, who earned his master’s degree in business administration in 2015 from Carey): Building Baltimore’s
first commercial-scale, urban hydroponic farm.
• Aezon (Neil Rens, Tatiana Rypinski, Ned Samson and Ryan Walter, undergrad-uate students at the Whiting School of Engineering, and team): Creating a device and companion smartphone app to test for multiple illnesses and conditions, from sleep apnea to diabetes, without the assis-tance of a physician.
• Mustard Seed Pillow (Anwesha Majumder, a graduate student at Bloomberg School of Public Health): Redesigning a centu-ries-old pillow to support proper infant skull development.
• RetinEye (Whiting School of Engineering
graduate students Aaron Chang, Hanh Le and Allie Sibole and undergraduate student Monica Rex): Pairing traditional ophthalmic lenses with a smartphone app using new image technology to support low-cost glaucoma screenings where tra-ditional screening machines aren’t easily accessible.
• ShapeU (Seal-Bin Han, Jordan Matelsky and Richard Shi, undergraduate students at the Whiting School of Engineering): Harnessing the power of teamwork and social networking to help individuals exer-cise more and meet their health goals.
• Wodagro (Justin Falcone, an archaeolo-
gy undergraduate student at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences): Devel-oping a new type of green roof that aims to be more lightweight, energy-efficient and affordable than traditional green roof designs.
• WalkThrough (Rome Chopra, a finance graduate student at Carey Business School): Helping Internet novices, espe-cially the elderly, stay connected with their communities and families via a digital tool that helps conduct basic functions such as email, online banking and social media.
• Neighborhood Watch App (Elana Stroud, a computer science undergraduate student at the Whiting School of Engineering, and Camilla Dohlman, a public health studies undergraduate student at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences): Providing a digital platform for Baltimore residents to bring attention to issues in their neighborhoods.
• White River Medical Fellowship (Kevin Burns, a resident in the General Preventive Medicine Residency at the Bloomberg School of Public Health): Creating a path-way for new doctors to work and learn in hospitals serving rural and Native Ameri-can communities.
Johns Hopkins Faculty Members and Researchers Present Continued from page 1
NEW JHTV Inventor PortalGot an invention?
Submitting your invention disclosure is now easier than ever. Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures’ new user-friendly, simplified electronic portal includes fewer questions and forms, making invention disclosures less complex and time-consuming. Anyone with a JHED identification account can access the portal.
For questions or support, contact Tina Preston at 410-516-4561.
| 10
JOHNS HOPKINS TECHNOLOGY VENTURES NEWSLETTER
FastForward East to Quadruple in Size, Fuel Baltimore Tech Boom
NEWS
Official groundbreaking for 1812 Ashland Ave.Official groundbreaking for 1812 Ashland Ave.
The May 15 groundbreaking ceremony for Johns Hopkins
Technology Ventures’ new FastForward East location at 1812
Ashland Ave. was about more than just the much-needed
additional space the new location will provide the innovation hub.
The ceremony represented the robust growth of the Johns Hopkins
innovation culture that is driving economic development in Baltimore,
and it signified Baltimore’s strong prospects for becoming a home for
tech-savvy companies, offering a wide range of new jobs to Baltimore
residents and cultivating a booming, technology-based economy.
As Baltimore’s movers and shakers gathered that Friday morning—
standing room only—under a fluttering white tent beneath a clear blue
sky next to the 1812 Ashland Ave. construction site, there were no
clouds—real or metaphorical—to dampen the speakers’ ardor.
“This new, larger space for our FastForward East innovation hub will help
meet demand in the market for affordable space so that startups will
start and stay here in Baltimore,” Christy Wyskiel, senior advisor to the
president of The Johns Hopkins University, said during the ceremony.
Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake added that the mere
existence of waiting lists for desk and laboratory space at Johns Hopkins’
FastForward innovation hubs signified growth in Baltimore.
The new and larger innovation hub’s job creation potential was evident
throughout the ceremony, as the industrious hum of new construction
work rang out from the construction site, indicative of jobs already
created to construct the building.
“The cornerstone of a healthy community has got to be about jobs, and
the building we’re celebrating today is tied inextricably to job creation,”
said Ronald J. Daniels, president of The Johns Hopkins University, at the
ceremony.
The future FastForward East innovation hub will be across the street
from the current FastForward East, which occupies 6,000 square feet
in the Rangos Building at 855 N. Wolfe St. FastForward East opened
there in early 2015 to complement the original FastForward location
near the university’s Homewood campus, but it didn’t take long before
names started piling up on the waiting lists to which the mayor referred.
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ISSUE #4 | JULY 2015
FastForward space always has been at a
premium.
The new seven-level, 165,000-square-
foot, $65.6 million building is scheduled for
completion by fall 2016. FastForward East will
occupy 25,000 square feet and will offer open,
communal spaces encouraging spontaneous
collaboration and impromptu cross-pollination
of ideas among FastForward innovators, to
include both early- and later-stage companies.
But even 25,000 square feet ultimately may
not be enough, if Baltimore continues along
such a fast-paced technological trajectory.
As Jamar Whitehead, a fourth-grade student
at Elmer A. Henderson: A Johns Hopkins
Partnership School in East Baltimore, noted in
his speech at the ceremony, “in a few years,
[Johns Hopkins] may need another one of
these buildings because my classmates and I
have some ideas of our own.”
Other speakers at the ceremony included
Ronald R. Peterson, president of The Johns
Hopkins Hospital and Health System and
executive vice president of Johns Hopkins
Medicine; Paul B. Rothman, dean of the
medical faculty of the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine and CEO of Johns Hopkins
Medicine; Sen. Nathaniel McFadden, a
representative of East Baltimore in Maryland’s
General Assembly; The Rev. LaReesa Smith-
Horn, pastor for East Baltimore’s Christ United
Methodist Church; Scott Levitan, development
director for Forest City – New East Baltimore
Partnership, the building’s developer; and
Raymond Skinner, president and CEO of East
Baltimore Development Inc., an organization
revitalizing the neighborhood.
About 100 Johns Hopkins employees—including many nurses—attended a Nurses Week happy hour at FastForward East (855 N. Wolfe St.,
Baltimore) on May 6 to celebrate nursing and to learn about some of the ways in which technology is revolutionizing the field. The event was hosted
by Microsoft, a sponsor of the FastForward accelerator program.